Communication with customers and the importance of addressing customer concerns continues to grow in importance. However, there are a small group of people that are simply looking to cause mayhem, dissent, or anger in the people using social media. These people are called social media provocateurs, trolls, etc. Culling this group of people from customers with real concerns is a growing problem.
There are typically three types of provocateurs: repeat haters are people who use multiple identities, often to escalate an issue that's small (i.e., amplify complaint); threadjackers are people who deliberately go off-topic, make off-color remarks, misdirect, bait and switch, engage in non-productive name calling, etc.; and fake account creators are people who create accounts with names similar to a company to answer questions from customers to cause trouble. It would be useful to triage (sort, sift, select) and respond to the damage caused by the three types of troublemakers before issues escalate.
Typically, companies monitor sites for trolling, flaming, and spamming. Users may be banned when an incident occurs. Registration requiring user information is often used as a deterrent. Laws like the Communications Act 2003 in the United Kingdom allow for prosecution of bad Internet behavior. However, these efforts are not efficient or timely. It would be useful to triage (sort, sift, select) and respond to the damage caused by the three types of troublemakers before issues escalate.